


Quiet

by onceandfuturewarlock



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gaius just really loves his stupid stupid adopted warlock son, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 19:08:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14960387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceandfuturewarlock/pseuds/onceandfuturewarlock
Summary: Gaius is a quiet man, leading a quiet life in quiet, if a bit cluttered chambers, in the heart of Camelot. And then Merlin comes along. And suddenly, things are not quiet. [Father's Day fic.]





	Quiet

Gaius is a quiet man.

He leads a quiet and, for the most part, unremarkable, life as a physician and scholar, gathering and grinding herbs, mixing draughts, dressing wounds, brewing potions, administering remedies, curing ailments, reading books, studying sciences, learning languages, and he does it, all of it, the way he does everything – quietly, plainly, unpretentiously, and unremarkably. And he is content.

He's _old_ , to tell the truth, too old to go frisking about as a younger man would, looking to win battles or glory or perhaps a bit of both; he's too old to even  _want_ to.

He has his books. He has his herbs. He has his potions. He has his quiet. And he tells himself he is content.

But…

But there are times when it isn't enough—his books, his herbs, his potions, his quiet, it isn't _enough_ , and there is something cold and horrible and terrifyingly empty inside of him, an indefinable, bone-deep ache that his potions cannot cure, a hole his knowledge can never fill, a longing for something—something  _more_.

And then, suddenly, things are not quiet.

Suddenly, there's someone else. Suddenly, there's a boy of barely eighteen summers who never stops talking and trips over his own boots and leaves a mess wherever he goes and won't listen to anyone and throws out spells like he thinks them candies and—and—gets up before sunrise to gather herbs so Gaius won't have to, and comes stumbling down the stairs every morning still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, but he musters a bright smile whenever he sees Gaius anyway, no matter how tired he is, and every time he learns a new bit of magic, his eyes light up, and he won't rest until he's tried it out for himself, and he sends his mother nearly every coin he earns, and some nights he falls asleep with his head on his spellbook because he couldn't bear to stop reading, and he can't tell a joke to save his life because he starts snickering before he can get out the punch line, and sometimes, as he helps Gaius stir his ointments and strain his tinctures, he says, softly and sincerely and almost to himself, "Thank you for putting up with me," as though he can scarcely fathom it.

Merlin isn't quiet.

Merlin is the exact  _opposite_  of quiet, really – he's filled to the brim with noise, overflowing with sound as a bucket with water, and come what may, it simply spills out of him, in faint gentle whispers or resounding, deafening shouts, a constant, unrelenting cascade of sound.

Gaius has his books. He has his herbs. He has his potions. And he has something quite a bit better than quiet.

And now— _now_  he is content.


End file.
